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Is a Play About Gaza Anti-Semitic? Read the Script.

By Robert Mackey February 18, 2009 2:00 pmFebruary 18, 2009 2:00 pm

In Wednesday’s New York Times, Patrick Healy writes about the possibility that the New York Theater Workshop may present a production of a new play inspired by the recent war in Gaza. Some critics have charged that the 10-minute play, “Seven Jewish Children,” by British playwright Caryl Churchill, is anti-Semitic.

Ms. Churchill’s play is currently being performed at London’s Royal Court Theatre as a benefit for the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians. The Royal Court’s Web site allows readers to download the full text of the play and read it for themselves.

Mr. Billington’s sympathetic review describes the context of the cryptic play and points to some of the lines from the script that have disturbed readers like Mr. Goldberg:

Caryl Churchill’s 10-minute play was written in response to the recent tragic events in Gaza. It not only confirms theatre’s ability to react more rapidly than any other art form to global politics, but also makes a fascinating counterpoise to Marius von Mayenburg’s The Stone, which precedes it at the Royal Court. Whereas The Stone shows how German children are often the victims of lies about family history, Churchill’s play suggests Israeli children are subject to a barrage of contradictory information about past and present.

The work consists of seven cryptic scenes in which parents, grandparents and relatives debate how much children should know and not know. It moves, implicitly, from the Holocaust to the foundation of the state of Israel through the sundry Middle East wars up to the invasion of Gaza. At first, the advice indicates the deep divisions within Israel (“Tell her they want to drive us into the sea” / “Tell her they don’t”); at the end, it becomes a ruthless justification for self-preservation (“Tell her we’re the iron fist now, tell her it’s the fog of war, tell her we won’t stop killing them till we’re safe”).

A leaflet handed out before the show, inviting donations to Medical Aid for Palestinians, tells you how “brutal” Israel’s “invasion” of Gaza has been. “Bombardment”, “devastation”, “earthquake”: these are reassuring little signposts. Otherwise, you might worry that Churchill has written a play that considers both sides of the conflict. In seven one-minute acts, Israeli adults discuss what to “Tell her” — in each case, an imaginary young Israeli girl. About the Holocaust? Suicide bombings? About 1967? “Tell her not to be afraid” is a recurring and poignant refrain. This simple device could have been highly effective, but it’s ruined by the play’s ludicrous and utterly predictable lack of even-handedness.

We all agree, I think, that the scenes coming from Gaza are not good. But the enormously complex reasons for such horrors are not considered here. Instead, Churchill comes across like a very minor Old Testament prophet, bewailing the Wickedness of my people Israel (Jeremiah 7:12). And the final lines, delivered by an Israeli in full rant, about how the Palestinians are “animals”, how he wants to see their children “covered in blood”, are simply outrageous.

London’s Jewish Chronicle quoted Jonathan Hoffman, a vice chairman of the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland, who had seen the play and called it “a libelous and despicable demonisation of Israeli parents and grandparents which will only stoke the fires of anti-Semitism.” Mr. Hoffman also charged that the play “draws on several antisemitic stereotypes, from the blood libel through to the ‘chosen people’ trope.”

In The Saudi Gazette, Susannah Tarbush wrote that the play “succinctly dramatizes the tragedies and ironies of history for both sides” and builds to what she calls “a devastating final scene set during the Gaza onslaught.”

It’s all Mel Brooks’ fault by writing ditties like “Springtime for Hitler and Germany”. Not to be outdone Jewish anti-Semites are at again with this parody in Israel’s Haaretz web edition of Hitler fuming about being unable to find parking in Tel Aviv. //www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1065210.html

I don’t recall such outrage when Dai, a play sympathetic to Israel, opened in New York…..it’s about time the west actually did see both sides of the conflict. I have a number of Jewish friends and I would be lying if I said I haven’t heard the various lines quoted from Chruchill’s play come from their mouths on many occasions.

Given the amount of Jewish money behind many of the non-profit arts organizations in New York City I doubt this piece will ever see the light of day this side of the Atlantic….and it’s not fair to label anyone who is sympathetic to the Muslim community as an anti-semite!

People have been making art critical of America for a long long time. Guess what, people are going to criticize Israel in art! Get used to it. Maybe it’s better to respond to criticism with a projection of strength rather than paranoid outbursts?

What are even remotely subjective views of the conflict in the Middle East typically viewed as anti-Semitic by Jews? Unfortunately, the Jewish community has cried wolf so many times we Americans are beginning to get skeptical.

I hardly think the last lines of the play can be considered outrageous, given the strength of the Israeli vote that went to the Israeli right and far-right. While an outrageous statement, it’s hardly a sentiment that isn’t espoused daily by a very vocal Israeli minority.

Also, can we please put to rest the erroneous and loaded proposition that opposition to Israeli policy, opposition to the occupation (or even opposition to the existence of Israel) is somehow the same as antisemitism. They are two distinct things. One is a rational political position while one is simple racism and prejudice. To equate them only serves to inflame the debate and silence people who might have a problem with some aspects of Israeli policy.

Yes everything is anti-semitic. I find it very anti-semitic that the Israeli’s are killing the Palestinians (semites). I also find it very anti-semiitic that Palestinian’s are killing Israeli’s (semites).
But above all else I find it terrible that if anyone has anything to say about Israel that is not about how much they love it and want it to continue to murder people they are ‘anti-semitic.’
I have given up trying to communicate with Israeli’s. You are either for them 100% or against them 100%. Given such wonderful choices I am left to, sadly, choose 100% against.
If I am anti-semitic it is because I am tired of being accused of being one by people who seem to get a kick out of killing children.
So count me as a proud anti-semite. Just please know that I do not hate all semitic people just Israeli Jews. And before everyone gets all upset let me add that I never intend to shoot a bottle rocket towards Israel so you really don’t have to shoot my children and wife.

What’s the big deal? I live in a very Russian/Jewish part of Brooklyn and all throughout Israel’s recent war on Gaza I heard my Ashkenazi immigrant neighbors and neighborhood store owners make comments suggesting that the Gazans were getting what they deserved, that the Gazans were to blame for the conflict and that the war should continue until Hamas is completely destroyed, no matter the cost in civilian lives. I think of what was said to Lady MacBeth (she of the idelible bloody spot): “methinks the lady doth protest too much.”

Rage over Gaza would be a lot more believable
if the people venting so vociferously about the Israelis
ever bothered to protest, even a little, about the much
greater horrors going on in, say, Congo, Darfur, Tibet,
Iraq (sectarian slaughter, not US mayhem), Algeria,
and the hideous everyday violence against women
throughout the Muslim world. Talk about disproportionate …

Yes, this sober depiction of the reality of the moral hypocracy in Israeli society and politics is clearly anti-semitic, because anything that does not affirm the in alienable right of the Israeli state to corral and herd and prod and kill Palestinians like cattle is inherently anti-semitic.

” And the final lines, delivered by an Israeli in full rant, about how the Palestinians are “animals”, how he wants to see their children “covered in blood”, are simply outrageous.”

–It sounds like a line taken from Hamas t.v. which regularly calls jews apes and pigs. I have never heard an israeli say they want palestinian children “covered in blood” or even targeted or any harm done upon them. On the other hand if you go on youtube and search Hamas t.v. you can find such rants about the jews and their children.

Juxtaposed against the type of anti-semitism the nazis used. The nazis claimed that jews thought they were better than every other race and openly stated jews wanted to take over the world. Yet it was the german nazi bible, mein kumf, that stated they were racially superior and it was world war 2 that saw an attempt by the german people to take over the world.
Makes you think.

Is this like a serious question? It’s not a play about Gaza; it’s a play about Jews taking delight in the death of other people, in this case, Palestinians. What is “Gaza” about some “Jews” sitting around a table talking in hateful (and extremely boring) repetitions all designed to show just how callous and hateful Jews are.

Really, this play could have been produced during the Third Reich, considering just how anti-Semitic it is.

And if you read the dialogue you have to wonder how someone so obviously utterly lacking in discrimination can run a major theatrical company in New York. The play is nothing more than a series of slogans. Totally embarrassing.

I think it would be wrong to censor this play. Artists play a vital role in society by bringing out alternative points of view. After seeing the play, one can disagree with Ms. Churchill’s point of view, but that doesn’t mean that it is not a valid one. Let the audience make up their own mind. If as some of the critics say, the play is shrill, then I’m sure audiences will take its arguments with a grain of salt.

People need to be careful and precise with regard to how they use the word “ANTI-SEMITIC.” They seem to use that epithet as shorthand for “Anti-Jewish” or “Anti-Israeli” or “Anti-Zionist.” But the word “Semitic” is not synonymous with Jewish, Israeli, or Zionist, and the use of the word “Anti-Semitic” is not at all appropriate here.

The Palestinian people are themselves Semites. Indeed, all Arabs — whether they live in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, the Arabian Peninsula, Egypt, Sudan, North Africa, Morocco, or Mauritania — are Semites. The Arabic language (not Hebrew) is considered the crown jewel (and most widely spoken) of the Semitic language family. Thus, the expression “anti-Semitic” means “anti-Arab” or “anti-Palestinian” to the same extent (if not to a greater extent) that it means “anti-Jewish” or “anti-Israeli.”

In fact, the people we know today as Palestinians are simply the descendants of Israeli Jews who converted to Islam (either voluntarily or forcibly) in the 7th century AD or afterwards. From the point of view of bioethnology, there is absolutely no racial or ethnic (or “blood”) difference between Palestinians (or Israeli Arabs) on the one hand and Israeli Jews on the other. The only differences between them are religious, cultural, linguistic, and perhaps political.

While those differences may well be significant, they do not justify referring to art (or any point of view) which leans towards the Palestinian side in the Israeli-Arab conflict as “Anti-Semitic” or, more outrageously, as “blood libel.”

I would expect that an organization as committed to the truth and as careful with its words as the New York Times would be more careful with its bandying-about of such an incendiary epithet. Likewise, the so-called critics who used that expression in their review of this work should be ashamed of themselves for the lack of accuracy and precision in their terminology.

No it is not anti-semitic. First of all, criticizing Israel is not anti-semitic. Secondly, the play itself contradicts itself too many times to be seen as a simple diatribe against Israel. It focuses more on the interplay between rational thought and fear; between self defense and aggression: “Tell her, don’t tell her”

The play does obviously skew towards Palestine, but just because some disagree with this viewpoint doesn’t make it hate speech.

A strong reaction in Feb 18’s The Independent from columnist Howard Jacobson, who says Churchill’s play adds to the current UK atmosphere in which “hatred of Israel [is] expressed in our streets, on our campuses, in our newspapers, on our radios and televisions, and now in our theatres. A discriminatory, over-and-above hatred, inexplicable in its hysteria and virulence whatever justification is adduced for it; an unreasoning, deranged and as far as I can see irreversible revulsion that is poisoning everything we are supposed to believe in here.”

The play doesn’t have to be even-handed. It has a point of view, which critics are arguing with, as is their right.

(And yes, there are Israelis and particularly American Jews who will, at the touch of a hot button, rant about the Palestinians, as a people, as subhuman.) Yet one must note that the strongest opposition to the war is the Israeli faction calling for peace and social justice for the Palestinians. There is no corresponding Palestinian peace movement that I know of.

And heaven knows the Palestinians’ fellow Arabs and Muslims have had no use for them other than as a stick to beat Israel with; indeed, it is not in the Arab states’ interest to alleviate the Palestinians’ misery for just this reason.

The tragedy of the middle east is that all sides are wrong and there is, and can be, no solution – religion, as Christopher Hitchens noted, poisons everything it touches.

It is dangerous that any dissent or debate regarding Israel is immediately regarded as anti-Semitic. Theatre and art are there to present a particular point of view in response to the world around us. Ms. Churchill has done that quite beautifully. The characters she creates in the play are certainly not representative of all Israelis, but these ideas do exist and must be dealt with and added to the discussion. The reality of the situation is that over 1000 people have been killed, and many more injured. Regardless of ones politics that is a devastating number, and Ms. Churchill is doing her duty as an artist to voice her response to the humanitarian tragedy and try to help alleviate it. Theatre, in particular a 10 minute theatre piece, is not there to present all sides of a story. it is there to express a single viewpoint that should spark the beginning of a larger discussion.

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